Who in their right mind can justify one person having access to “at least five full 30-round magazines” along with an “assault-style rifle,” which were used in the slaying of a TSA officer at Los Angeles International Airport last Friday? Why does anyone outside of law enforcement and/or the military ever need access to such means of mass destruction?

Those of us who support (rather low-key) gun-control measures, such as background checks and limiting magazine capacity, are trying to be reasonable, cooperative and respectful of the legitimate use of guns. But assault weapons with high-capacity magazines are not what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they penned the Second Amendment. If we don’t come to terms with how ludicrous it is for private citizens to purchase these weapons with few restraints, we will read more and more tragic stories.

Jean C. Lindsey, Denver

This letter was published in the Nov. 7 edition.

For information on how to send a letter to the editor, click here. Follow eLetters on Twitter to receive updates about new letters to the editor when they’re posted.

Who in their right mind can justify one person having access to “at
least five full 30-round magazines” along with an “assault-style rifle,”

Can’tcha feel the freedom? Or at least feel the lobbying dollars at work?

Best,

D

rightwingliberal

Yep, I can smell Bloomberg’s money every day.

Dano2

Bloomberg isn’t sending out Fear ‘n’ Smear e-mails to rubes 5 times a week, scaring them into buying yet another high-profit killing machine.

Best,

D

rightwingliberal

How would you know.

ags4ever

bloomberg is, however playing on your hoplophobic fear of weapons in general, and sending you money, to violate the constitutionally protected rights of others, though, dano.

You and your like love slavery, and hate the constitution. We know that.

Robtf777

Any “ban” would be as workable as the “ban on marijuana” wasn’t.

Just as there was no practical way to round up Every Ounce of Marijuana in Denver or Colorado……there is no practical or Constitutional way to round up Every High-Capacity Mag that exists.

And just as there apparently is No Practical Way to “plug” Our Porous Border to prevent millions of 100-300-lb “illegals” from coming and going……bringing whatever it is they bring……including illegal drugs……there is No Practical Way to stop anyone from smuggling in however many high-capacity mags they can smuggle in……creating a Black Market for High-Capacity Mags just as smuggling creates a Black Market for illegal drugs.

Those……Liberal…..types……who claim that the US has “lost the war on drugs” should not even think about starting a “war on guns/magazines” that isn’t going to have any better success.

Tbone

So you’re telling us that all those ‘sponsible gun owners would willingly flout the law against purchasing illegal weapons.

Sounds about right.

ags4ever

since the law that makes purchasing some weapons is blatantly and flatly unconstitutional, those who abide by the constitution would exercise their constitutional protected civil right to own such weapons, yes. Obviously, you hate freedom and the constitution.

Tbone

Aw, somebody learned a new word!

Now. Where exactly was this law ruled unconstitutional?

ags4ever

In 1791, when the 2nd amendment was ratified by the required number of states. Every law that violates that amendment is flatly and completely unconstitutional, regardless of what the suporeme court says, for the Constitution itself says the law is unconstitutional.

ags4ever

Where is there any justification for banning the standard capacity magazines of any rifle that is commonly in use today, either by the military or by civilians.? There isn’t any.

Your implication that there is some nefarious “gun lobby” at work here, flies in the face of the fact that there are more than 160 million people who own firearms, and support the right to own them and carrying them.

fedupwithgungrabbers

Ms. Lindsey, It is not the job of someone exercising his/her Constitutional Rights to justify to you or anyone else why they “need” access to certain types of guns or magazines that you happen to find objectionable. Rather, it is incumbent upon those that seek to restrict the Bill of Rights to provide a strong justification for why those rights should be restricted. So far, you and other gun ban supporters have failed miserably to do that. Where is the logic in saying a 30 round magazine is not OK but a 15 round magazine is? Where do you folks come up with these silly arbitrary limits anyway? What’s to stop you at some point from saying five rounds is too many just because that happens to be the number you pick? As far as “assault style rifles” go, what if the shooter in this case had used a handgun? Would you be advocating that private citizens shouldn’t have access to “such means of mass destruction?” If not, why? Are you aware that the shooter at Virginia Tech didn’t use an “assault rifle” but instead a common handgun to slaughter 32 people? Are you aware that handguns are used in far more homicides every year than so-called “military style assault rifles?” So why aren’t you gun control advocates demanding a handgun ban instead of an “assault weapons” ban? I know the answer. It’s much easier for you to take advantage of public emotion and ignorance to take away all those scary-looking “assault weapons” now. Once you’ve accomplished that, you can come back later for people’s handguns.

Dano2

Show me where in the Constitution it tells us you can have 5 hi-cap mags.

Your comical insistence that you have such a right is comical. And sad at the same time.

Soon enough the Gun Lobby will have gone too far and the rational, sane public will finally be able to have an honest discussion about the limits of the term ‘militia’ and what the Founders intended, and how far modern, sane society has come.

Best,

D

fedupwithgungrabbers

The Bill of Rights was written over 200 years ago and refers to “arms” which means the firearms that are in use at the time. By your logic, the 1st Amendment, also written over 200 years ago, should refer to free speech via web sites and email. The 2nd Amendment states the right of the people to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed.” What part of SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED do you not get. It means just what it says. By restricting magazines, which are a necessary component for most firearms today to function, you are by extension infringing on the right to arms.

Dano2

No – society changes. By your specious and flawed logic, you should be lovingly polishing your M1 Abrams after you are done ranting here.

That is: your wife is no longer your property (sorry, pal), and you can no longer refuse to serve that African American at your lunch counter. Nor do you have the air rights over your property. And other such obvious changes that the gun lobby hopes we forget.

That is how the American Constitutional law system works.

Soon enough we will have had enough and will have a conversation about limits. In your lifetime, too. And we will defeat the Gun Manufacturer’s Lobby. Because right now this is nuts.

Best,

D

fedupwithgungrabbers

Whatever dude. You are so far gone there’s no sense in trying to reason with you. I don’t know why I bother.

Dano2

I appreciate you having no answer for historical changes in society. It’s a shame that some ideologies don’t discuss that more, is what I say.

Best,

D

guest

Biggest changes in society came after the Civil War with the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. So as soon as you pass your amendment to ban guns you will actually have a case. Right now you are the equivalent of someone howling at the moon.

ags4ever

Even if dano and his pro-slavery supporters succeed in getting an amendment repealing the 2nd amendment, the people’s right to own and carry the same weapons used by the miltiary will still exist for that is a right with which we are all born as citizens of the USA. The right has never depended on the existence of the constitution or the bill of rights for its existence. The same is true of all the other rights enumerated in the bill of rights.

fedupwithgungrabbers

I see. You’re one of these “living constitution” types. Well, a “living constitution” that changes with the whims of the times is just the same as no constitution at all. Certain fundamental freedoms are timeless and do not become irrelevant as society changes.

Tbone

The founders were also “living constitution” types.

Papa Smurf

Really? Then why did they give us a provision for amending it? Wouldn’t it just suffice to interpret it in the context of the day? The founders believed that the Constitution should say what they intended it to say and that it should be interpreted narrowly. They included a mechanism for amending it to allow for societal and technological changes as the nation matured, but they purposefully set the amendment bar high to prevent frivolous changes with every political whim.

Tbone

I’m…they gave us a provision to amend it because it’s living.

guest

No, bonehead. The people who say the Constitution is a living document say they don’t need to amend it, they can just reinterpret it or simply ignore parts they feel don’t fit the modern world. Their interpretation basically negates the reason to have a Constitution.

Tbone

You realize that the reason we have a supreme court is to interpret the constitution, right? And that everyone has a different interpretation? ABCs that interpretation changes over time?

guest

And you realize that courts use precedents to establish what the law is and means. We have approximately 225 years of precedents the leaves very little room for radical changes in our Constitution and the people who talk about a living Constitution don’t like the precedents that are in place today.

Tbone

Well, when you’ve got “originalists” like scalia literally throwing out precedence, and really just making it up as he goes, precedent really doen’t mean much.

Papa Smurf

Talk about making it up as you go along. How about citing some examples?

Tbone

Sure. Here’s a piece by a guy at Yale Law.

digitalcommonsDOTlawDOTyaleDOTedu

/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1790&context=fss_papers

For instance, he wants to throw out Roe v Wade. Note that I didn’t say that he’d take an open mind while hearing the case – he’s openly said he’d throw it out.

And the right has the nerve to talk about activist judges.

guest

He isn’t Scalia. I think that is what PS wanted an example of.

Tbone

Yea, I included one. And there’s plenty more at the linky.

Papa Smurf

They’re only “activist judges” if they rule your way, T. If they come down on my side of the issue, they’re “brilliant, insightful and courageous” 😉

Tbone

Pretty much!

ags4ever

where?

Papa Smurf

Thanks for the cite. Mr. Burt’s views are interesting, but they still represent the opinions of only one author. Scalia has never made a secret of his desire to overturn Roe V. Wade, but not for the reasons you might think. Simply put, Scalia believes that Roe was wrongly decided, and that abortion policy is an issue best left to the states… you know, that whole Federalism thing? Stare Decisis may be a fundamental principle of the court, but it must be applied (if you’ll pardon the pun) judiciously…. otherwise, Dred Scott would still be the law of the land, and nobody would have ever heard of Brown v. Board of Education

guest

You are correct. Scalia is an originalist and thinks that if you are going to find a right in the Constitution it should actually be in the Constitution.

Papa Smurf

Yeah. Go figure.

ags4ever

PS, did you know that Dred Scott was never declared invalid by any succeeding court, even after the 13th amendment was ratified? It is the law of the land, according to one view. Of course the 13th amendment, which was adopted constitutionally, mostly, over-rides it, but that is a moot issue.

ags4ever

Roe V. Wade stated that the court made up a right of privacy from certain emanations of the constitution. It never declared abortion was a constitutional right. And it did state that if science ever decides on a definition of when “personhood” begins, then the fourteenth amendment’s protections of that person’s civil rights automatically kicks in and roe v. wade is null and void from that point.

News for you, science and logic both have found that the onlly rational point for declaring that any individual person’s becoming a person is when the fertilized embryo that develops into that person is implanted in the uterine lining of the mother’s womb, for there is no other point at which that person can become a human being or person, logically and scientifically.

Roe V. Wade was never constitutional.

And neither are any views that say that the second amendment can be violated in any way.

Tbone

Sorry, but no…science and logic have not declared that an embryo is a person. You really can’t stop with the made up arguments, can you?

ags4ever

nothing made up about them, for they are the absolute truth.

How can the birth process make something that isn’t a human being before it undergoes that process into a human being? Answwer: It cannot, for it is just a natural product of the gestation period of a female human being.

Human beings beget human beings. They don’t have dogs or snakes or rats as babies. So their babies are human beings from their beginning.

Tbone

Embryos are not people

ags4ever

The embryo that result from the successful union of one of a male human’s sperm cells with a female human’s egg cell is genetically a human being, though, and not something else. It is a human being that did not exist before that successful union of sperm and egg cell occurred. It is a human being, despite your contentions.

It most definitely isn’t the property of the mother (for ownership of another human being was prohibited by ratification of the 13th amendment in 1865). Nor is it “just a clump of cells”, or “part of the woman’s body”, for it is genetically different from the woman’s body. That’s why the placenta forms, in order to buffer that foreign organism developing within the woman’s womb from her immune system. There isn’t any point during pregnancy when a human baby is not a human being, and cannot be any point where it is not a human being, if that baby is to be considered to be a human after it is born or can survive outside the mother’s womb. It is flatly illogical to state otherwise.

If you claim that the embryo is not a person, you obviously haven’t been around many pregnant women who wanted to keep their child, for they know that their child is a human being from the time they even think they might be pregnant.

Tbone

No one is saying it’s not human, genius.

ags4ever

actually, scalia, to some extent, did not throw out any precedents, but returned to the law of the land as it was originally passed, as written in 1789-1791. His statements, while partially correct in some respects, also ignore the fact that the original intent of the constitution was that the right of the people to own and carry arms of the military shall not be denied them. That, strangely enough, is exactly what the 2nd amendment states.

ags4ever

The words don’t change. And the meanings of the words don’t change. Your stating that only the supreme court has the power to declare what the constitution says goes against what the constitution actually says–it says it is the supreme law of the land, along with the laws that are passed in accordance with its provisions. Every official, including all justices, of the USA is sworn to support the Constitution of the USA as the supreme law of the land (ARticle VI) and can be impeached (and should be) and removed from office if they violate that oath.

Dano2

Precious:

The founders were also “living constitution” types.

Really? Then why did they give us a provision for amending it?

I’m…they gave us a provision to amend it because it’s living.

Folks, these are the minority of people who wish for no restrictions on guns in our communities. Surely that intellectual bar is not too high to overcome.

Best,

D

ags4ever

dano, obviously, you refuse to understand plain English. Only those amendments that have been passed in accordance with Article V of the Constitution are valid changes to the constitution. Not changes that you would LIKE to see because you hate freedom and love slavery. Not changes that come because a majority of justices (or even one) has an agenda to violate every precept of the constitution and change it by judicial fiat.

You and your like want to destroy the constitution, by saying that it means what you want it to mean, and nothing else. Your attitude is exactly that of the Communists in the Soviet Revolution, and the Nazis in Germany in 1933. You put your own interpretation in place instead of the clear meaning of the words used in the constitution.

Your hoplophobic fear of firearms in the hands of the private citizens is the same attitude that Hitler and Lenin both espoused–that only the dictator has rights, and the common people have none.

ags4ever

yes, they gave us a provision to amend it, and only amendments taken in accord with that provision are valid. Revisions to the constitution because of a majority decision of the supreme court, or an executive order by the president, are flatly unconstitutional. So are changes to the document because “peoples’ perceptions have changed”. Only an amendment passed according to article V of the constitution is part of the constitution.

ags4ever

actually, they were not, tbone. For they gave us only one way to change, constitutionally, the provisions of the constitution. That is the process outlined in Article V of the constitution. No other means of changing the constitution is valid. not a judicial decree, not an executive order, and not any ordinary bill passed by a simple majority of both houses of congress and signed by the president.

Dano2

Facts are facts. Sorry that conflicts with what people try to sell you. That you choose to believe these hucksters is why you have no answer.

Best,

D

ags4ever

you have nothing to support anything you state, dano. For your hoplophobic statements are a clear sign of someone who knows he/she has nothing to support his/her own opinions.

guest

I don’t think any of us can bear a M1 Abrams tank. So not only is your logic flawed but your actual statement is a flat out lie. The way you change the Constitution is by amending it, not by ranting about how you will defeat the Gun lobby.

I’m waiting for Obama to come out and reassure us all, “if you like your guns, you can keep your guns.”

Papa Smurf

Harry Reid wouldn’t bring a simple bill to expand background checks to the floor of the ** democrat controlled ** Senate less than six months after Newtown because he knew that even members of his own party wouldn’t support it. But you actually think that two thirds of BOTH houses of Congress are going to vote to repeal or negate the 2nd Amendment, and that three quarters of state legislatures are going to ratify that? Really? You aren’t waiting ’til the first of the year to start smokin’ that stuff, are you?

Papa Smurf

Sorry, Guest… that was meant to reply to Dano, not you.

Robtf777

“No – society changes.”
==========
Society may change……but the words of the Constitution…..don’t…….anymore than the Ten Commandants do…….unless a change is made in the Constitution itself.

An Amendment to the Constitution vacated all that “Constitutional” nonsense about slaves…….but that is what it took: An Amendment.

The FACT is that our Founding Fathers wrote the 2nd Amendment……and made NO ATTEMPT to disarm the citizens – the people – of this nation……because disarming the people was NOT their intent when they wrote that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The ONLY way to Constitutionally “reverse” the Historical Meaning of the 2nd Amendment is by way of ANOTHER Amendment……..and NOT by way of the “Liberals Know Best” ideology.

Rob

Yeah, you are correct. Your post is nuts.

tomfromthenews

This is one of the most lucid, non-sarcastic posts you’ve written, Dano. Thanks. I enjoyed it.

ags4ever

despite your claims, “dano”s post is neither lucid or rational. It is full of falsehoods.

ags4ever

what is “specious” or “flawed” about claiming that people have the right to have the same weapons as those used by the military of the time. That’s what the U.S. V. MIller, Heller and McDonald cases have all stated.

Actually, ignorant one, nothing in the constitution ever stated that a woman was her husband’s property. Despite your lies.

Your claim that those with whom you disagree are “nuts” shows you know you haven’t got any facts, or any conceivable or possible kind of logic or reasoning to support your anti-freedom, anti-gun claims.

BTW, the NRA is not the “Gun Manufacturer’s lobby. It never has been. It is the lobby of the people of the USA who care about their freedoms. Since you and your like hate freedom, and enjoy slavery, it obviously gets your hatred.

MickeyD

When I got my first shotgun (at age 13), I took an NRA gun safety course. One of the first things they impressed upon us was to never, never, ever carry a loaded gun around other people except while hunting in the field or at the firing range. We always emptied our guns as we were leaving the hunting area or before we left the firing range. Furthermore, when we got to the car, we broke down our guns and placed them in the trunk, just to be sure we had not inadvertently left a round in the chamber. We were told that many people get killed or injured by guns they thought were empty.

Jean Lindsey wrote: “Who in their right mind can justify one person having access to “at least five full 30-round magazines” along with an “assault-style rifle…” I say, who in their right mind can justify carrying a loaded weapon around in public (other then a law enforcement officer), whether or not they have a concealed carry permit. These “law abiding citizens” who have concealed carry permits are more dangerous to society as a whole than bad guys with guns. The founders of the NRA would roll over in their graves if they knew about all the wingnuts we have running around with loaded weapons on their hips.

Papa Smurf

We live in a society where a 22 year old man out jogging is shot in the back, and killed, by three poster children for Planned Parenthood who did it because they were “bored, and thought it would be fun to kill someone.”

We live in a society where an 88 year old WW II veteran sitting in his car outside an FOE (Fraternal Order of Eagles) Lodge waiting for his buddy to come out is set upon by two thugs and beaten to death.

We live in a society where two other thugs rob a woman at gunpoint. When it turns out that she doesn’t have enough money to satisfy them, they shoot her 13-month old infant point-blank in the face.

And we live in a society where simply going to (a movie, school, work, convenience store, a meeting with your congressional representative, a counseling center on a military base, or [fill in the blank]) can cost you your life.

All of the victims in the above scenarios had one thing in common, other than their victim status. NONE of them woke up that morning and said, “You know what? I’m really bored… I think I’ll go find someone who is committing violent crimes or shooting randomly at people, and put myself in his path.” In fact, right up until the bullets started flying, that thought was the farthest thing from their minds… and as a consequence, when it DID happen to them, they were totally unprepared to act in their own defense… and they died like sheep to the slaughter. I’m not some paranoid, terrified victim-in-waiting… I fully realize that the PROBABILITY of getting caught up in one of these scenarios is miniscule. But I also realize that the POSSIBILITY is ever present, as the people above could attest to, if only they were alive. That is why I carry a gun at all times. Legally, and with the proper training and experience. I hope to never use it. But if I ever should find myself confronted with such a situation, I will not die like a sheep.

MickeyD, I applaud your stance on proper firearms training and safe gun handling practices. I’ve practiced them my whole life, all 64 years of it. But an unloaded weapon locked away in a safe at home will do nothing to protect me if some wanna-be thug teenagers decide that they’re bored and think it would be “fun” to kick the c*r*a*p* out of me. And when you make a statement to the effect that “(t)hese ‘law abiding citizens’ who have concealed carry permits are more dangerous to society as a whole than bad guys with guns,” you destroy any credibility that the rest of your argument might have. It is demonstrably false… I submit that more people die at the hands of “bad guys with guns” during a single week, any week, in the city of Chicago alone, than have been killed or wounded by the accidental, or unlawful, discharge of any (all) CCW permit holders’ guns, collectively, in any given year. Or even any given decade. I would challenge you to show otherwise with documented proof.

And BTW, in the unlikely event you ever find yourself in one of the situations described above, you might end up owing your life to one of those “wingnuts we have running around with loaded weapons on their hips.”

MickeyD

In 2011, there were 11,101 gun homicides in the U.S. and 19,766 gun suicides. I submit that virtually all of the suicides were law abiding citizens and, obviously, were gun owners, many with CCW permits.

Most mass gun killings have been done by people who were “law abiding citizens” right up until the time they snapped and decided to kill a bunch of folks and/or commit suicide by cop. And I’m sure at least some of those were CCW permit holders. They were obviously gun owners.

Then there are people like George Zimmerman, a CCW permit holder who shot an unarmed teenager who he thought was a threat to him. And just a few weeks ago, two CCW permit holders got in a tussle, pulled out their guns and killed each other. Both of these cases also involved the ‘Stand your ground’ law. Concealed carry together with ‘Stand your ground’ is a lethal combination. I don’t want to be walking around the streets with CCW permit holders who think I may be a threat to them anymore than I want to be around bad guys with guns. And since every day there are more and more “law abiding citizens” carrying guns around than there are bad guys with guns, the chance of being shot, either accidentally or on purpose, by a CCW permit holder is greater than being shot by a bad guy.

And I sure as heck don’t ever want to have to rely on a wingnut with a gun to try to save my life. What could possibly go wrong with that?

I believe that old saying: “Guns don’t kill people. People with guns kill people.”

Papa Smurf

Oh my. I scarcely know where to begin.

A suicide is an act of violence against one’s self… it’s been described as the severest form of self-criticism. But gun suicides rarely, if ever, pose a risk to the public, as you hope to imply.

George Zimmerman shot and killed a person who had attacked him and was in the process of smashing his head against a concrete sidewalk. It wasn’t a case of “stand your ground.” Even the prosecution never tried to assert that it was. It was pure self-defense, which has always been acknowledged as any person’s right. George Zimmerman was acquitted of any wrongdoing.

Please provide the details of the two CCW permit holders who “got in a tussle, pulled out their guns and killed each other.” Where, and when did this take place? Please provide links to the relevant news articles.

Which mass killers held CCW permits? Name them, please.

How do you know there are more CCW permit holders walking around than bad guys with guns? What is the basis of your claim that there is a greater chance of being shot, accidentally or on purpose, by a CCW permit holder than by a bad guy? Please provide your stats and references.

The first rule of debating is that you are entitled to argue the facts, but you are not entitled to make up your own facts out of whole cloth. I’m sorry that you are so fearful of people who have been thoroughly vetted and found to be reliable and trustworthy. But my advice to you is, get used to it. We are not going to go away, nor will we surrender our rights to your paranoia and fear.

You said… “And I sure as heck don’t ever want to have to rely on a wingnut with a gun to try to save my life. What could possibly go wrong with that?” That’s a good question. Here’s a better one… Who are you going to rely on for your protection? The police? I know it’s an over-worn cliché, but when seconds count, they’re only minutes away.

MickeyD

Here’s more from the Detroit Free Press:

Two drivers are dead
after a road rage incident escalated into a shootout. The incident
happened around 6:45p.m.Wednesday on M-66 near Steele Street.

Witnesses
tell WZZM 13 a one driver was following another driver too closely. The
first driver pulled into a car wash parking lot and the other driver
followed them into the parking lot.

Witnesses say the driver of
the following car fired shots, and the first driver returned fire. Both
drivers were shot and killed. Authorities say both men, ages 43 and 56,
had licenses to carry concealed weapons.

The mother-in-law of
James Pullum, one of two men who died in an apparent road-rage fueled
shootout Wednesday, said her daughter and Pullum’s mother witnessed the
double shooting.

The double shooting happened shortly before 7 p.m. at the Wonder Wand Car Wash at 426 S. Steele St.

Police
said the 43-year-old Pullum and the other victim, 56-year-old Robert
Taylor, both pulled their vehicles into the car wash after some type of
road-rage incident moments earlier.
Both had permits to carry concealed weapons.

After a confrontation between the two men outside of the vehicles, they exchanged shots that ended up being fatal to both men.

Papa Smurf

Thank you for taking the time to look this up and post it. While you have substantiated one of your many assertions, I hope you’ll also have the intellectual honesty to acknowledge that it represents one single instance where two CCW permit holders acted in such a manner. One can always find an anomalous anecdote to bolster an argument, but surely even you would concede that this incident is in no way representative of the hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of CCW permit holders throughout the country. I stand by my challenge to you to provide any validity to your claim that CCW permit holders present a greater threat to the public at large than the entire population of “bad guys with guns.”

ags4ever

again, no reliable citation. no one believes you.

guest

Most of the mass killings were done by people with mental problems, not “law biding” citizens who simply snapped.

ags4ever

not according to the FBI. There were only 8500 homicides involving firearms in the United States in 2011, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports table 20.

The number of suicides in the USA remains relatively constant, regardless of the means used. And Japan, which has a virtual and effective ban on firearms, has more suicides than the US does, both in numbers and in numbers per 100,000 population.

Your definition of a “law abiding citizen” is obviously pretty loose. You say anyone who commits a crime is a law abiding citizen until he commits a crime. Most rational persons would define a person as a law abiding citizen only if that person is neither inclined nor determined at any time to break the laws against robbery, assault, rape or murder, but instead chooses not to at any time, unless in defense of him or her self, or another person.

In case you haven’t heard, MickeyD, George Zimmerman was found not guilty on all counts in the death of Trayvon Martin, meaning he committed no crime. According to the EVIDENCE used in the case, Martin assaulted Zimmerman, trying to kill him, and Zimmerman justifiably used lethal force to stop Martin’s attempted murder. Despite your lies, Zimmerman never claimed the “Stand Your Ground” law defense. He based his defense entirely on self-defense, the same laws that are present in every state in this country.

Since you lie about other things in your post, your claim that two CCW permit holders got in a tussle, pulled out their guns and shot each other is also a lie without a specific, verifiable citation.

Your claim that there is a greater chance of being shot by a CCW permit holder is also a lie, for such has not been proven to be the case.

peterpi

Thank you.

ags4ever

for what? Lying? FOr that is what Mickey D did. He lied.

guest

Do you have examples of people with concealed carry permits being more dangerous to society than bad guys with guns? It would be interesting to see what got you to that conclusion.

ChrisInDenver

Please cite the data that supports the following statement: “These “law abiding citizens” who have concealed carry permits are more dangerous to society as a whole than bad guys with guns”

Are more gun deaths attributable to legal concealed carry holders than criminals?

ags4ever

MIckeyD, I don’t know in what state you took your alleged NRA safety course. I took one when I was in the Cub Scouts, and I never heard that one was “never to carry a loaded gun around other people except while hunting in the field or at a firing range.” I was taught three simple rules. First and foremost was that I was to consider that every firearm is always loaded at all times. Second was that I was never to allow the muzzle of my firearm to cover anything (and I repeat ANYTHING) that I was not willing to destroy. And lastly, that I was NEVER EVER to touch the trigger of the weapon UNTIL and UNLESS I was willing to destroy the target in front of my weapon.

You claim that no one can justify carrying a loaded weapon around in public, other than a law enforcement officer. You ignore the fact that it isn’t the “loaded weapon” that is dangerous. It is the person carrying that weapon. If the person (LEO or not) is prone to fly off the handle, he or she should expect to be stopped by persons of a calmer disposition with their own weapons.

Your claim that law -abiding citizens with concealed carry permits are far more dangerous to society as a whole than bad guys with guns is exactly the same kind of hyperbole that Sarah Brady and Josh Sugarman and their anti-freedom anti-gun organizations spouted off when every state in the country was considering “shall issue” carry laws, claiming that we’d have “blood in the streets” if such laws were passed. Guess what? Such an increase in crime has not occurred despite the lies of you and your like. In fact, the opposite has occurred. VIolent crimes are down by 37%, violent crime rates are down by 49%, homicides using all kinds of weapons are down by about 38%, and homicide rates with all kinds of weapons are down by over 50%, suicide rates with firearms are down by nearly 19%, and accidental deaths due to firearms have declined by 60% or more, with accidental death rates involving firearms have declined by 69%.

Your calling others “wingnuts” shows that you know you have no facts whatever, nor any kind of logic or reasoning to support your opinions.

holyreality

So shall all voting be restricted to white men who owned property?

That was what was considered a citizen to those founding fathers.

Papa Smurf

And that provision of the Constitution was changed by amendment. If people don’t like the right to keep and bear arms, they’re welcome to try to change it through the same process. But until then, the 2nd Amendment, as interpreted by SCOTUS decisions, remains the supreme law of the land.

ags4ever

ever hear of the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th amendments, holyreality? All those amendments were ratified to correct inequities in voting rights. But none of those amendments explicitly protect the right to vote. They just say that the states cannot use the color of one’s skin, or previous condition of servitude, or one’s gender, or the failure to pay a tax before being allowed to vote, or not being over the age of 18, to deny anyone the right to vote. Those amendments left the states free to state their own requirements for the ability to vote in any election.

Most rational people support the most common of those restrictions–that one must be at least 18 years of age, a citizen of the USA, of sound mind (i.e., not being confined to a mental institution by a court order, or adjudicated to be mentally deficient) , and not serving prison time for any felony crime.

Though there is some rationale to limiting the right to vote, which is among our most important rights, to those who understand the issues and vote intelligently and rationally.

Also, even if the second amendment as such is repealed, the people of the united states still retain the right to have the same arms that are used by the government (military and police), because that right was not granted by the constitution, or the bill of rights. It is our right by our birth and as a condition of our citizenship in this country (if a naturalized citizen).

rightwingliberal

“Show me where in the Constitution it tells us you can have 5 hi-cap mags.” Show me where it says I can’t.

Seeing as how the self contained metallic cartridge was about 100 years away and the repeating firearm a bit further yet, there is no way the writers of the Constitution could have known what was to come. So they just said arms.

But……the US Post Office……did exist……and they did write Amendments to the Constitution that should have prevented The Government from keeping track of……who we wrote…..when…..where……and opening the letter and writing down what we wrote……”just in case”……we were connected with the British……or still had pent up British loyalties.

What our Founding Fathers never envisioned The Federal Government doing 200 years ago……is done by Obama today……simply because the “computer” makes it so darn easy to log, track, track, correlate, and store…..forever…..even all these posts.

Perhaps we should give a “shout out” to all those wonderful people who work at the NSA and to President Obama himself: Keep up the good work all you guys…..and best wishes to you Mister President.

mrfxx

You are incredibly naive if you think that the Obama administration is the first – or will be the last administration – to “spy on its own” (I’m guessing you don’t know a THING about J Edgar Hoover for instance – and he “served” under both parties). Like it or not, I suspect the problem is with our security agencies (perhaps they are misguided – or perhaps they are megalomaniacs “the power behind the throne” types) but the administration (R as well as D) gets the blame when they get caught.

guest

You are correct. But you can go back before Hoover and find spying going on. Woodrow Wilson was the president the was one of the biggest violators of American civil liberities.

At Wilson’s urging, a Sedition Act (not unlike the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 ) forbade Americans from criticizing their own government in a time of war. Citizens could not “utter, print, write or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the government or the military. The Postmaster General was given the authority to revoke the mailing privileges of those who disobeyed (this would be the equivalent of turning off the internet for groups found to disagree with the government). About 75 periodicals were were shut down by the government in this way and many others were given warnings.

In the fashion of a police state, the Department of Justice arrested tens of thousands of individuals without just cause. One was not safe even within the walls of one’s own home to criticize the Wilson administration. A letter to federal attorneys and marshals said that citizens had nothing to fear as long as they “Obey the law; keep your mouth shut.” In fact, the Justice Department created the American Protective League. Its job was to spy on fellow citizens and turn in “seditious” persons or draft dodgers. In September of 1918 in NYC, the APL rounded up about 50,000 people. This doesn’t even include the infamous Palmer Raids (named after Wilson’s attorney general) that occurred after the war.

ags4ever

Even before wilson, Abe lincoln actually jailed hundreds of northern democratic party editors without trial during the war between the states, and never allowed them any trial.

peterpi

You’re forgetting:
All good things in government started before Obama was elected. All bad things in government started after Obama was elected, according to types like Robtf.

ags4ever

Obama and the democrats had the power in 2009-2010 to stop the NSA from doing anything by repealing the unconstituitonal PATRIOT act in its entirety. But they instead strengthened that unconstitutional law in 2010, and obama signed that strengthened law into effect. So NSA’s spying is entirely at the democrat’s doorstep now.

Same with the violation of the 6th amendment in the amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. Obama had the responsibility to veto that unconstitutional action. He did not. And so that violation of the constitution belongs entirely to him.

Dano2

Show me where it says I can’t.

You’ve made my point for me perfectly.

Thank you!

Best,

D

ags4ever

actually, he disproved your point. You were claiming that the constitution says the government can limit the size of magazines. But in fact, the 2nd amendment says specifically that government cannot limit the ownership or carrying of any kind of weapon that it used by the military of the time.

holyreality

The same way Madison never envisioned semi-auto rifles and nutcase killers shooting up schoolyards.

ags4ever

So what if he didn’t ? Madison did know, since both sides in the Revolution used cannons with grapeshot and other types of shot that made those weapons into extremely large shotguns, that the improvement in weapons was inevitable. He, and every other supporter of the 2nd amendment and the rest of the bill of rights, advocated that the citizenry (the ‘militia’) always have the same kinds of weapons, if not better ones, that the standing army of the time, which included all government forces, including police, possessed.

holyreality

The point is that Madison would shudder to see his 2nd amendment used to enable these schoolyard slaughters.

Standing armies were seen as the enemy of liberty by many of the “founding fathers”. The Second was meant to keep militias (the only alternative to a standing army) deadly. The Militia Act from that same time frame ordered states to establish militias.

These militias were intended to support the nascent US Federal Government. They were never intended to attack the government if it was not limited enough.

Only a delusional fantasy would ever believe that the second was ever meant to enable an uprising. George Washington led a private militia to battle in Pennsylvania to quash the Whiskey Rebellion. The Militia Act was to keep private militias out of the picture. If you think a bunch of Gomers and Bubbas with their AR15 popguns could stand a chance against the military police state with Armor, Artillery, and massive infrastructure, you need to see how the Syrian rebels are losing against a far far weaker government and that would be the best case scenario for your rebel militia fantasy.

But then like for like to compete with the National Guard, I support the second. With proper licensing of users and tracking of hardware and ammunition, AND liability insurance for when the unthinkable happens and your precious arms are used in illegal slaughter, yes Gomer and Bubba CAN HAVE their autotomatic rifles, artillery, and other deadly hardware, JUST COVER YOURSELF with licensing, registration, and insurance.

Are we a nation of laws, or pirates?

ags4ever

despite your false contentions, the second amendment doesn’t “enable these schoolyard slaughters”. What enables them,and makes them inevitable, are the unconstitutional “gun free zone” laws that deprive ONLY those who are neither inclined or determined to commit murders, robberies, assaults and rapes their constituitonally protected civil rights of firearms ownership and the carrying of firearms.

Obviously, you’ve never read any of The Federalist Papers, or the Anti-Federalist Papers, or any other writings of the time that the Second Amendment was proposed, discussed and ratified by the states.

Membership in an organized militia was never required for anyone to own the same weapons used by the standing army of the day. For the militia is, and always has been, the whole body of the people, outside of a few elected officials. It is not just the armed forces, or the National Guard and Naval Militia.

Licensing, insurance and regulations are all infringements on the right to keep and bear arms, reality. They are all unconstitutional restrictions upon that right.

As to your stating that the 2nd amendment was never intended to prevent tyranny, (or in your words, enable an uprising), your comments go directly in the face of Justice Joseph Story, who wrote in his “Commentaries on the Constituiton” in 1833 that the 2nd amendment was the palladium (shield) that protected all the other rights of the people. Your comment disagrees with even liberal then-senator Hubert Humphrey, who stated in an interview printed in “Guns” Magazine in February 1960: “Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used, and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.”

The Whiskey Rebellion did, however achieve the rebels’ purpose, though, for the congress relaxed some of the excessive taxation on the production of corn liquor that made it impossible for the corn farmers of upstate new york to make enough money to live on. The organizers of the rebellion had already dispersed by the time the New York Militia (not a private militia) appeared on the scene.

Your ignorance of the actual history of this country is quite sad.

holyreality

Activists judges a half a century later and a Senator saying what the magazine readers want to hear hardly validate your bit of fantasy.
I believe the New York Militia was a private operation when Washington needed them because there were no well regulated state militias available or willing to help him.

It has been decades since reading the Federalist Papers, but what I remember is they were an apologetic to anti-Constitution leadership, propaganda to convince slave owners that the US Federal Goverenment was “Limited” enough that they would not lose chattel ownership of human beings.

The Second was also intended to validate escaped slave patrols as “militia”. Your marraige to a false narrative of history is what is indeed sad, sadder still is a large percentage of Americans drink that kool-ade by the barrell.

ags4ever

activist judges? ROFLMAO! For those justices were only returning to the original meaning of the 2nd amendment,and the statements and judicial decisions of the first 150 years of this country that defined it as an amendment protecting an individual right.

Stephen P. Halbrook, a noted constitutional law author, stated in “That Every Man Be Armed” (1984): “In recent years it has been suggested that the Second Amendment protects the “collective” right of states to maintain militias, while it does not protect the right of “the people” to keep and bear arms. If anyone entertained this notion in the period during which the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were debated and ratified, it remains one of the most closely guarded secrets of the eighteenth century, for no known writing surviving from the period between 1787 and 1791 states such a thesis.”

Leonard W. LEvy (in “Origins of the Bill of Rights” (1999), stated: ” Militias were possible only becaue the people were armed and possessed the right to be armed. The right does not depend on whether militias exist.”

The New York milltia of the Shay/Whiskey Rebellion was a state supported militia. and you ignore the fact that the rebels had dispersed before Washington ever showed up with the New York State miliita to suppress the nascent rebellion. The rebels had achieved their desired goal–a lessening of the state and federal whiskey taxes that had made it impossible for them to make a living.

Your own marriage to a false narrative of history is quite apparent when you claim falsely that the 2nd amendment was intended to validate slave patrols, for if you believe that then you ignore the fact that it was the slave owners (democrats) who passed the Black Codes and the “Jim Crow” laws after the war between the states that kept black citizens from owning the firearms that made them free men in fact as well as law. Your hatred of freedom and love of slavery is quite apparent.

Papa Smurf

Show me where in the Constitution it says you have a right to espouse your views on an electronic forum that can be accessed by virtually the entire world. By your reasoning, your rights to free expression would be limited to what you could put forth using a quill pen, iron gall ink and parchment.

Best,

P

guest

“Show me where in the Constitution it tells us you can have 5 hi-cap mags.”

“the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

There’s nothing in the second amendment that says “the right of the people to keep and bear arms as long as they don’t go above 5 hi-cap mags.”

But if you don’t like the actual correct answer, you can always resort to Article 5.

Tbone

Unfortunately the SCOTUS has already ruled that yes, the right to keep and bear arms shall be infringed.

Fowler

SCOTUS also decided it’s an individual right and yet we still hear arguments about being in a militia. Lots of sane, rational reasonable common sense people think that purely cosmetic restrictions that have practical effect on regulating the criminal use of guns just don’t make sense. Obviously reasonable regulation is allowed, but banning weapons based on how they look is not reasonable. Neither is imposing limits on magazine size going to have any tangible effect on crime.

ags4ever

(1) The “militia” consists of every able bodied person over the age of 17 who is capable of bearing arms, and is a citizen, or has announced his/her intention to become a citizen, of the USA. That’s what the militia has always been. Everyone with the exception of some elected officials.
(2) The courts have repeatedly held that being a member of an organized militia is not a pre-requisite for the ownership of any firearm. In fact, they explicitly stated that being a member of an organized militia is not a requirement–their reasoning was that the militias could not exist unless there is a body of armed citizens on which the militia can draw.

(3) Since the 2nd amendment states explicitly that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” that means that there can be no regulation of the right to keep and bear arms. Look up the meaning of “infringed” Merriam Webster says it is to wrongly limit or restrict, or to encroach upon in such a way that violates law or another person’s rights. There is no such thing as a “reasonable” regulation of the right to keep and bear arms. For all are impositions of tyranny.

Since you admit that imposing limits on magazine sizes is in itself not going to have any effect on crime , why have such limitations, if that is your argument?

guest

Did they say that about having 5 hi-cap mags, since that was what I was addressing.

ags4ever

Wrong, tbone. For the supreme court has also stated that ownership (possession) of the arms “that are in common use at the time” is specifically protected by the 2nd amendment. Since fully-automatic, semi-automatic, and all other forms of firearms are “in common use” at the current time, the citizens can own and carry any of them. Read up on the definition of the word “infringed”, tbone.

SCOTUS also said that the constitution itself, and not what the justices say about the constitution, is the supreme arbiter of what is constitutional. (Frankfurter, “Graves V. New York” [306 US 466] (1939). The constitution means what it says, not what some small oligarchy of a minimum of 5 people say it means.

You misread my statement, tbone. For the nonsensical and worthless clinton/feinstein assault weapon ban was clearly unconstitutional, in that it banned a class of firearms that were in “common use” at the time, both in the military and in civilian use.

According to the clear wording of the 2nd amendment, which you refuse to understand, people can carry and own any kind of firearm they want to carry. Even the unconstitutional and highly racist National Firearms Act of 1934 did not ban the possession of fully automatic weapons and other weapons it defined as “destructive devices”, it just made them more expensive and harder to get, by imposing a tax on the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms, a constitutionally protected civil right. Placing a tax on the exercise of a civil right was declared to be unconstitutional after the ratification of the 24th amendment, which banned poll taxes as a requirement for voting. No difference between having to pay a poll tax to be allowed to vote and being required to pay a “transfer tax” in order to buy a constitutionally protected firearm.

Robtf777

Whether or not the Constitution says we can have 5…..or 100…..hi-cap mags……isn’t the issue.

The issue is what to do about it……from both a practical and Constitutional viewpoint.

We could “ban” all future production and sales…….but that would only create a Black Market for the “your guess is as good as mine” number that currently exist……..which could be a LOT.

And hi-cap mags are certainly easily smuggle-able……through the same Porous Borders through which millions of “illegals” go back and forth through……and through which millions of pounds of marijuana has passed……that could meet the “ammo needs” of the armed criminals in this country just as smuggling millions of humans and tons of illegal drugs meets the “labor” and “dope” needs of our society.

Fowler

Typical leftist interpretation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Those documents don’t tell the people what they can do, they tell the government what it CAN’T do to the People. That’s why they’re called rights not privileges. It’s just a completely alien mindset to liberals that government power should always be limited or it becomes an abuse of rights.

alan9074

Dano? Are you suggesting that the Constitution is based on the premise of defining what the people can do? It’s not, it’s based on what the government is empowered to do. To answer your question though, read the 9th Amendment, which basically says that just because any given right wasn’t explicitly authorized by the Constitution, it cannot then be automatically construed to be prohibited. Further, there is no right to have children or even eat food or drink water to survive as a described right for us to be entitled to, but we assume it to be so.

“best”

Dano2

Of course not. The Constitution is framed such that the Founders knew that things would change and be adjudicated in the time: “just compensation” is one example. What is “just”? “Well-armed” is another.

It is ridiculous to boorishly and bellicosely yell ‘original intent’ in these instances. Soon enough the small minority will flood the zone past a certain point with their loud ululations. Then finally action will come.

Best,

D

Papa Smurf

“Well-armed?” Can’t find that term any where in the Constitution. Don’t you mean “well regulated?” And the concept of “original intent” has been the guiding principle for the court for 224 years, now… it’s served us pretty well

Dano2

That wasn’t well-written – I was illustrating gun-grabber’s rant, apologies. You do know, of course, that just compensation and well-regulated are vague, right? and not detailed in the Constitution? Why do you think that is? Too busy harvesting tobacco to fill it in?

Best,

D

Papa Smurf

“Well regulated,” as it refers to militias, has pretty much been put to bed by D.C. v. Heller. Ownership, possession, and lawful use of firearms was ruled to be an INDIVIDUAL right, unrelated to, and irrespective of, the so-called “militia clause,” as has been pointed out so many times here by so many posters. Time to give that one up, D.

Dano2

Yes, thank you for helping me make my point.

Some here (and seemingly on every newspaper comment board in this country) howl and whine and rend their garments at the slightest hint of regulation, as if it were a violation of their constitutional right.

Best,

D

ags4ever

dano, since the second amendment clearly prohibits any regulation of a right that the second amendment says shall not be regulated (one meaning of “infringed”. it is a violation of a constitutionally-protected civil right to regulate, deny or violate the right of the individual to keep and bear arms in any way.

Infringe also has to do with gradually creeping up on the total destruction of something. Read the definition in just about any dictionary, dano.

ags4ever

actually, dano, both “just compensation” and “well regulated” had well understood meanings when the 2nd and fifth amendments were passed. “Well regulated” meant something that fulfilled its designed function efficiently, as in a well regulated clock that kept good time. And “just compensation” means the same today that it meant in the late 18th century–the fair market value of a piece of property.

Fowler

Adjudicated is right – just like the SCOTUS did in Heller regarding the individual right versus the collective right debate. Now we debate what’s reasonable and that is a subject for legislation and recalls.

ags4ever

where does the term “well-armed” occur, dano?

REad The Federalist Papers #28, #29, and #46,dano. Read Justice Joseph Story’s “Commentaries on the Constitution” (1833). Read the words of Thomas Jefferson, Tench Coxe, Patrick Henry, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, George Mason IV, George Washington and many others about the intent of the writers of the 2nd amendment about the purpose of the 2nd amendment. The 2nd amendment protects the right of all individuals who wish to do so to have the same arms that are used by the military and police of the time, if they cannot get better ones.

BTW, “just compensation” has always had the same meaning. The fair market value of the property.

SInce more than 130 million (some estimates put it as high as 250 million) own and carry firearms, some illegally, but most legally, there is hardly a “small minority” of firearms owners.

chaka419

Show me in the constitution where it says there is a RIGHT to abortion, or a RIGHT to health insurance, or that the use POLICTICAL CORRECTNESS is ok to curtail the RIGHT to FREE SPEACH??!!

Dano2

All caps notwithstanding, you’ve made my point perfectly. Thank you!

Best,

D

ags4ever

so tell us where in the constitution it states that you can ban standard capacity magazines? or even “high capacity magazines” (which don’t actually exist, unless you’re talking about the 200 round SMAW magazine.

ChrisInDenver

That’s comically comical.

Dano2

I know right? Saying it is your constitutional right to have a hicapmag is hilarious!

Best.

D

holyreality

That’s part of the right to pursue happiness.

ags4ever

actually, it’s part of the right to keep and bear arms. For the arms of the modern military are the “arms” referenced in the 2nd amendment to the US constitution. That is clear in 1939’s U.S. V. Miller court case, as well as 2008’s Heller Case and 2010’s McDonald case.

ags4ever

It is a constituitonal right to have the ammunition and magazines (or other “feeding devices” that are commonly used with standard firearms of the day. The US. V. Miller (1939), Heller (2008) and McDonald (2010) cases all affirmed that right.

ags4ever

Your contenition that you can limit the right of any other individual to own and carry the arms of the soldier is worse than comical. It is nefarious, criminal and indicative of a despotic, tyrannical disposition.

Look at the 2nd amendment. It clearly says “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” That means that no “arms” that are used by the military or police of the time can be banned, or other wise restricted, ignorant one.

You further show your ignorance in not knowing that the term “militia” refers to the whole body of the people, even today. For US Law states that every able-bodied citizen (or anyone who intends to become a citizen of the US) over the age of 17 is a member of the militia. US law divides the militia into the “Organized Militia”, which is the armed forces of the USA, including the reserves and national guards of the states, and the “unorganized militia” which is everyone else. (The upper age limits are and have been held to be moot, for people over the age of 45 are still capable of bearing arms).

Our “modern” society shows little sanity, when it keeps only those persons who are neither inclined nor determined to commit robberies, rapes, assaults and murders from having their own firearms with them at all times, while it allows murderers, rapists, armed robbers and assaulters free rein in certain areas, called “gun free zones” to murder indiscriminately for from several minutes to several hours, secure in the knowledge that everyone they face is disarmed by such laws.

rightwingliberal

Jean, did you go back in time and ask them this, or are you just making it up. It is probably the latter.

ChrisInDenver

They would want us to have nothing stronger than single shot muskets. I asked.

ags4ever

actually, the feinsteins, obamas, bloombergs, soros’s and others don’t even want us to have BB guns, air guns or single shot muzzle loading muskets. They want slaves, not free citizens.

fedupwithgungrabbers

Just about any type of firearm can be misused to kill a lot of people. Look at the Navy Yard shooter, who used a single pump-action shotgun to kill 12 people and injure others. But no, Jean Lindsey didn’t write a letter at that time questioning why people need access to pump-action shotguns. Instead, she waited until one of those demonized “assault-style rifles” was used to kill one person, figuring her gun prohibition argument would get more traction by attacking the guns that, at the moment, are easier to restrict. If the gun grabbers could ban all types of guns, they would, but they have to start somewhere.

ChrisInDenver

Once the “assault-style” rifles are banned, they’ll come after whatever gets used in the next shooting, until all you’ll have left is NERF. Feinstein already said if it were up to her she would ban every gun there is, but she didn’t have the votes.

Papa Smurf

Make no mistake, the Holy Grail of gun control is a complete ban on private ownership of all handguns… but to get there, they have to conduct a campaign of “creeping incrementalism…” Tiny nibbles at the outer edge of the Amendment in the name of “common-sense gun SAFETY legislation.” They won’t even admit that it’s gun “control.” This year, it was magazine capacity and universal background checks. There, that didn’t hurt very much, did it? Next year they’ll be back for something else. Eventually, they’ll enact a ban on so-called “assault style weapons.” And once they get that precident, it’s Katie bar the door. They’ll start after handguns by banning the really extreme ones… you know, the .50 caliber Desert Eagles, and such. After all, who *NEEDS* that much firepower for home defense? Then it’ll be the rest of the big caliber weapons… the .44 mags., .45 ACPs, .357s, etc. Next it will be a ban on all autos… after all, nobody *NEEDS* anything more than a revolver, and… should I go on?

And that, boys and girls, is why we can’t afford to give so much as an inch, even if it seems to make “common sense.” MOLON LABE.

ags4ever

agreed, papa smurf.

That’s why the only defense is a good offense, demanding that all gun control laws be repealed, period. For none have ever stopped any crimes, and there is plenty of evidence that shows that crime has always increased whenever strict gun control laws are passed.

Robtf777

“Who in their right mind can justify one person having access to “at
least five full 30-round magazines” along with an “assault-style rifle,”
which were used in the slaying of a TSA officer at Los Angeles
International Airport last Friday? Why does anyone outside of law
enforcement and/or the military ever need access to such means of mass
destruction?”
=============

True…….no one really does.

But that’s not the problem.

The problem is that magazines of that size have been sold in thos country for so long that there is no practical way to do anything about the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, or more that may already exist.

Yeah, we could ban future production and sales……….but that would do Absolutely Nothing to reduce the numbers of those that have already been sold…….which has a “life expectancy” of…..almost forever…….meaning that a “ban” would do little more than create a Black Market for the future sales and smuggling of those magazines through the same Porous Borders that millions of “illegals” go back and forth through……along with whatever drugs they may be smuggling.

Ironic…..ain’t it……that some of the same people who spoke up about Legalizing Marijuana because “keeping it illegal” only created a Black Market of Smuggled Marijuana that The Government missed out on Taxing……….suddenly think that making large-capacity magazines “illegal”……when all it may do is what they claimed Illegalizing Marijuana did: Create a Black Market of a desirable product that could easily be smuggled into the US upon which NO ONE pays Taxes.

Yes…..no one “needs” high-capacity magazines anymore than the average pothead “needs” a joint.

But the issue of “need” may be irrelevant…….so long as they already exist in high numbers……and are easily smuggled through Our Porous Borders……to make any “ban” as “workable” as marijuana that Colorado just legalized because the “ban” not only did not work……no taxes were collected.

eddie47

The thing is Marijuana should be legal but controlled and the same with weapons. If Marijuana sellers overreach and have illegal operations going on in the back of the store I’m sure the government will once again swoop in. Citizens depend on gun dealers and marijuana sellers to be honest and abide by the laws given. Those who turn to the black market will not be respected.

ags4ever

Gun ownership is protected by a constitutional amendment, but the individual’s right to own them existed long before that amendment was ever written, debated or ratified.

No such amendment protects the possession or use of pot.

Papa Smurf

A couple of points:

1. The term “weapons of mass destruction” refers to weapons of war capable of producing casualties in the thousands, tens of thousands, and even more through a single use. A nuclear weapon is a WMD. A canister of VX nerve agent is a WMD. A semi-automatic rifle, regardless of the size, or number, of magazine(s) attached, properly belongs in the classification of weapons known as “small arms.” Even a heavy machine gun doesn’t rise to the level of a WMD… it’s properly called a “crew-served weapon.” Referring to individual firearms as weapons of mass destruction removes all meaning from the term.

2. After 25 years active duty in the Marine Corps, I believe I’ve had more than my fair share of training and experience with real, honest-to-goodness “assault weapons.” There is one capability that must be present in order for any firearm to qualify… it MUST have the ability to fire in a fully automatic mode, which is to say that the weapon will continue firing at it’s cyclic rate of fire when the trigger is depressed until the trigger is released, or until the ammunition supply is exhausted. NONE of the modern day rampage shootings have been committed with such a weapon. These so-called “assault-style weapons” are nothing more than semi-automatic rifles, no different in function from the dozens, if not hundreds, of more conventional looking rifles with polished walnut stocks and intricate filigree etchings on the metal receivers and barrels. They just look scarier.

3. If we’re going to restrict the Bill of Rights to the conditions as they existed in 1789, then the Denver Post’s freedom of the press must be limited to hand-set type face, manually operated presses, and delivery of their papers by horse-drawn wagon. Likewise, all of us (Dano, Tbone, toohip, peterpi, primafacie, thor, and yes, PapaS) will have to cease and desist, because Al Gore hadn’t invented the internet back then, so it can’t be covered.

Cheers

Tbone

Last I checked, the internet doesn’t kill thousands of people every year.

Cheers.

Fowler

Four times more people are killed with knives than rifles each year according to the FBI statistics, so if you want to put a dent in the murder rate maybe you should focus on knives.

Tbone

Why only include one type of gun?

Fresh picked cherries here!

Fowler

Because the letter we’re discussing referred to “assault” weapons and that was what was used in this incident and because that has been the focus of all the recent gun legislation in NY, Colo., Conn. etc. Everyone has been focusing on “assault weapons” or haven’t you noticed?

ags4ever

FBI crime reports show that people used their hands, feet and fists to kill each other twice as often as they used any kind of rifle, or any kind of shotgun. And more often than they used all kinds of rifles and shotguns put together in 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008.

Knives and other cutting implements and all other weapons (except hands feet and fists) are used by people who are determined to murder others nearly as often as they use any kind of firearm.

Tbone

Well, let’s see. SInce the FBI says that about 9000 people were murdered with guns last year, vs about 800 with hands, you’re only off by a factor of about 100.

Nice work cherry picking your stats though, we’re all impressed.

ags4ever

you are the only one who is “cherry picking” stats, since you are not supporting your own contention that so-called “assault rifles” ought to be banned. Your cherry picking is quite obvious, for you undermine your own arguments.

Tbone

It’s odd, then that I never said anything about assault weapons.but you go on with your cherry picking and putting words in peoples mouth.

ags4ever

See the letter to which these comments are appended, tbone. That letter is about “assault-style rifles”. Your support of that letter says you are presuming that all guns are “assault weapons”, which is an absolute falsehood.

BTW, even your comment where you say “FBI says that about 9000 people were murdered with guns last year, vs. about 800 with hands, you’re only off by a factor of 100″, is not factual, for the ratio between 9000 and 800 is only about 11 to one, ot 100 to one as you state. Not surprising that you cannot even do simple mathematics.

ags4ever

because you and your like are saying that “assault rifles” (a misnomer and lie) are used to kill large numbers of people. You and your like are trying to ban, unconstitutionally, those weapons.

Tbone

9000 people were killed with guns last year. 2000 with knives. So 4 times as many were killed with guns. You got your numbers backwards.

ags4ever

Your statements are false. For 8506 people were killed nationwide with guns in 2011, while knives were used in 1756 homicides that year. But only 323 people were killed using all kinds of rifles, including the kinds of rifles you and your like wrongly call “assault rifles”. that’s a ratio of more than 5 people killed with knives and other cutting instruments for every person killed with a rifle.

Papa Smurf

I’m only pointing out the hypocrisy of applying one set of rules to the First Amendment, while imposing an entirely different standard on the Second Amendment. Even you don’t get to have it both ways, T.

Tbone

The first amendment doesn’t kill.

guest

Neither does the second amendment.

Tbone

You’re right. Guns do that.

fedupwithgungrabbers

Guns don’t kill people, gun control does.

ags4ever

Guns don’t kill anyone, despite your lies, Tbone. PEOPLE kill others, with anything they can get their hands on, and even use hands, fists and feet to kill others more often than they use all rifles and all shotguns to kill.

Tbone

Yea. People with guns. 100 times more than with fists.

You just don’t quit with the cherry picking of the stats, do you? Do you ever stop to think about how dishonest that is?

Of course not.

ags4ever

Wrong, tbone. I do no cherry picking, for what I stated is the truth, unlike your statements. FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports data for 2011 showed that 787 people were killed by others using “fists, hands or feet”, while a total of 8,506 people were killed nationwide by other people using all kinds of firearms. Or slightly more than 11 times as many people were killed by others using all kinds of firearms in 2011 than were killed by others with fists,hands or feet,. not 100 times as you falsely stated. You lied by a factor of almost 10 to one.

Those same stats showed that 323 people were killed by others with all kinds of rifles in 2011. And 354 people were killed by others with all kinds of shotguns in 2011. So a total of 677 people were killed with all kinds of rifles or shotguns combined in 2011, versus a total of 787 people were killed by others using their fists, hands or feet that year.

The only person who is being dishonest here is yourself, tbone.

eddie47

Neither of you are totally right or wrong. Free Speech means the right to have hate speech and hate speech leads people to kill. The 2nd Amendment allows just about anyone to buy weapons and thus exacerbates the ease of killing. Ban on either ? Never! Restrictions? Yes!

ags4ever

Restrictions, NO!

Tbone

Hate speech is not a right.

Papa Smurf

Actually, hate speech IS protected speech, as long as it does not present a clear and imminent danger to any person. (Note that I didn’t say anything about offending anyone… there is no constitutionally protected right not to be offended.) The First Amendment wasn’t intended to protect just the speech (ideas) we like, or agree with. It was intended to protect the expression of unpopular ideas. The ones that make you want to puke. As long as your speech (hate, or otherwise) doesn’t incite others to violent, or otherwise illegal acts, you’re free to spew just about anything you want. That doesn’t mean that the P.C. crowd won’t come down on you like a ton of bricks, but the government (gubmint?) should pretty much leave you alone.

ags4ever

Restrictions, never! for the right to keep and bear arms “shall not be infringed”. Meaning that right shall never and can never be restricted, violated, denied, or abridged by any government. Any desire to restrict the right to keep and bear arms indicates a desire to enslave others, for ownership and carrying of firearms is what characterizes free men. Slaves have no rights.

DR

Ideas, written or verbal, have killed far more people than guns have. “Mein Kampf”, the Koran, the Bible. A major inspiration for not only what Timothy McVeigh did but how he did it was the book “The Turner Diaries”, etc.

Dangerous ideas are far more lethal than any gun has been. And I can buy a copy of 3 of the 4 books I listed at Barnes & Noble 7 days a week. Wheres the restriction on them?

Tbone

Guess what? Lots of those people used guns to kill.

Also – never heard of banned books?

Seriously – how do you ban an idea?

ags4ever

Yes, PEOPLE have used guns, as well as many other things, like their bare hands, their fists, and their feet, to kill others. The firearms themselves never killed anyone BUt then you and your like refuse to think, period.

Tbone

Right. People with guns kill people. How hard is this to understand?

ags4ever

how hard is it for you to understand that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed–meaning it cannot be restricted in any way?

THe firearms themselves do not do the killing. It is the person using the firearm, or any other weapon he or she chooses, including their bare hands, fists or feet, that does the killing.

ags4ever

Wrong, tbone. For the ideas you spout have resulted in the deaths of millions–you support abortion, do you not? ANd you oppose the unrestrictable right of the individual to have arms in their possession at all times, where ever they may wish to go, which denies them their right of self-defense.

Tbone

Unfortunately, it’s not unrestrictable. Rights have restrictions. And what does abortion have to do with anything?

ags4ever

wrong, tbone. For the 2nd amendment clearly says that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. look up the meaning of the word infringed some time. If you can understand plain English, shall not be infringed means that the right cannot be reduced, violated, regulated, crept up upon, denied, or undermined by any law. Rights by their very nature cannot be restricted.

Abortion is murder. ANd you and your like support abortion, so you and your like are gullty of supporting murder.

lakeside227

If the government has the power to restrict our Rights, they aren’t really Rights, are they? They become PRIVILEGES doled out by the government.

ags4ever

as lakeside quite properly points out, if our right to keep and bear arms is restrictable, it is no longer a right, but a privilege to be granted or denied by government at its whim. That is anathema to anyone who loves freedom. But for you and your like, it’s par for the course, for you show your hatred of freedom and love of slavery with every post you make.

ags4ever

That is a totally irrelevant argument.

For in fact, despite your hoplophobic statements, firearms don’t kill anyone. PEOPLE use firearms, as well as a wide variety of other weapons, including their bare hands, fists, and feet, to kill thousands of people every year. If you eliminate firearms, you just open up things for the brutes to exert their strength over everyone else.

Tbone

Guns kill. Period. That’s what they’re for.

ags4ever

wrong. They are used for a wide variety of things, like protecting your freedom to spout your ignorant falsehoods. No firearm has ever killed anyone, despite your falsehoods. People using firearms, and a wide variety of other weapons, have killed others, but that isn’t the fault of the inanimate object itself. Only to those persons who are inordinately terrified of inanimate objects could they kill by themselves.

peterpi

I’m tired of gun-rights absolutists quoting only the last 14 words of the Second Amendment. Or worse, only the last three.
1) There are NO unrestricted rights in the US Constitution or in the Bill of Rights, including the sacrosanct and hallowed Second Amendment. None. Period.
2) The Second Amendment talks about the right of the people to keep and bear arms in the context of the security of a free state and a well-regulated militia, and no, well-regulated does not mean a a bunch of gun enthusiasts can keep a cadence going. It is NOT a free-standing clause.
Even Scalia or someone in the Heller decision said owning and using a firearm was NOT an absolute, unrestricted right.
Certain gun enthusiasts whine over why should gay people need to marry each other, or why women need access to contraception or abortion. So, it is perfectly proper to ask why ordinary people need dozens of magazines or hundreds of rounds of ammo.

Fowler

SCOTUS pretty well torpedoed the militia argument when they decided the right was an individual right not a state right, so that argument is not valid. As to reasonable regulation, I agree with you there, but we obviously disagree on what’s reasonable. Since we’re talking about a constitutional right, the restriction should be the bare minimum, narrowly tailored to accomplish a compelling state interest. Bans on magazine sizes, banning cosmetically bad looking weapons and similar restrictions don’t reduce crime.

fedupwithgungrabbers

I would argue that with the thousands of gun laws already on the books including federal background checks to purchase and the basic prohibitions on violent felons and mentally incompetent people owning guns, “reasonable” regulation exists already.

ags4ever

I would argue even further that, since none of the thousands of laws enacted by localities, states and the federal government that limit the individual’s right to have the “arms” of their choice in their possession at all times, and to carry them where ever they wish, have actually reduced crime, which was their stated purpose, but instead have actually INCREASED violent crimes, and violent crime rates in every locality in which they’ve been enacted, they are all useless and should all be repealed.

There is nothing reasonable about any gun control law, for they all have as their basic purpose the destruction of the militia, and the enslavement of the people.

Papa Smurf

You are correct that Scalia, writing for the majority in Heller, states that the right to keep and bear arms is not absolute. But the heart of the decision states that the basic right of the people to own, possess and employ firearms for any legitimate purpose is an INDIVIDUAL right, irrespective of the “militia clause.” Based on the SCOTUS decision, and for the purpose of this debate, the last 14 words of the Amendment are the only ones that matter. Those who keep arguing that the right is somehow contingent on participation in a state militia are vainly howling at the wind. That train has officially left the station.

As to why “ordinary people need dozens of magazines or hundreds of rounds of ammo,” it isn’t about * need *… it’s about free people making free choices. Just like marriage, contraception and abortion. If you don’t like guns, then for God’s sake, don’t buy one. But you don’t get to stand in my way just because my choice may be different than yours.

Wishful thinking aside, guns are a part of our society, and they’re not going away. At least not in the foreseeable future. As Fowler points out, the right is subject to reasonable regulation, and what’s considered “reasonable” is really at the heart of the debate. The pendulum has swung quite a few time on this one over the years, and I suspect it will continue to do so.

RaginGnome

In response to “As to why “ordinary people need dozens of magazines or hundreds of rounds of ammo,” it isn’t about * need *… it’s about free people making free choices.” I believe another Marine said it better in response to Senator Feinstein after the Sandyhook shootings.

.

Senator Dianne Feinstein,

I will not register my weapons should this bill be passed, as I do not believe it is the government’s right to know what I own. Nor do I think it prudent to tell you what I own so that it may be taken from me by a group of people who enjoy armed protection yet decry me having the same a crime. You ma’am have overstepped a line that is not your domain. I am a Marine Corps Veteran of 8 years, and I will not have some woman who proclaims the evil of an inanimate object, yet carries one, tell me I may not have one.

I am not your subject. I am the man who keeps you free. I am not your servant. I am the person whom you serve. I am not your peasant. I am the flesh and blood of America.

I am the man who fought for my country. I am the man who learned. I am an American. You will not tell me that I must register my semi-automatic AR-15 because of the actions of some evil man.

I will not be disarmed to suit the fear that has been established by the media and your misinformation campaign against the American public.

We, the people, deserve better than you.

Respectfully Submitted,

Joshua Boston

Cpl, United States Marine Corps

2004-2012

The Constitution was never meant to limit the freedoms of the citizens but was to limit the power of the government.

U.S. Army/U.S. Navy 1975-1997

Si vis pacem, para bellum

fedupwithgungrabbers

This was a great letter – thanks for posting.

SDaedalus

I agree with the two other posters replying to Peterpi, at least in regard to how the [I]Heller[/I] decision largely put the whole individual-or-collective-right question to bed, and that we can now move beyond that to determine what limits are constitutionally permissible on an individual’s right to bear arms under the 2nd Amendment.

SCOTUS will only start answering that with decisions over the next 20 years or so in the negative, namely, what statutes or regulations are -not- constitutional and why…and they started in [I]Heller[/I] by holding that a 1975-era law restricting handgun ownership in the entire District of Columbia (and requiring trigger locks/dissembling rifles/shotguns) violates the 2nd Amendment because these effectively prevent a citizen from owning/using weapons “in common use” for defense of their home and family.

In some fairly significant [I]Heller[/I] dicta, SCOTUS reaffirmed prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms, and laws prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons. SCOTUS also made clear in dicta that the 2nd Amendment’s reference to ‘militia’ did not by itself bar laws preventing ownership of weapons “most useful in military service – M16 rifles and the like”…which seems like a nip-in-the-bud to the argument that the 2nd Amendment is intended to allow citizens parity or even the ability to wage effective resistance against modern government forces in the event that some citizens make the determination that the government has become ‘tyrannical’ or similar hysteria that gets tossed around on these threads from time to time. Given how [I]Heller[/I] was the first significant review of a law in conflict with the 2nd Amendment, SCOTUS did not decide on what level of judicial review lower courts should apply (rational basis, strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, or other).

That very limited ruling about what 2nd Amendment conclusively protects (handgun ownership for home defense) and the dicta, leaves a lot of uncharted territory on the map. Just like how states and the feds following [I]Roe v Wade[/I] started to test the limits of a women’s right to choose an abortion by passing varying degrees of restrictions over that right, the feds and states will pass gun control laws, which will be challenged (or existing laws challenged), and eventually some cases will reach SCOTUS for a ruling…and the blank parts of the map will be drawn in. Until then, no one can say with certainty that any given law (such as the 30-round mag ban in CO) is or is not constitutional.

My preference is to get the map drawn in as promptly as possible so we can get beyond the rhetorical posturing from all sides. That requires folks who truly believe their 2nd Amendment rights are infringed by any given federal/state/local law to bring suit against the government — not just vent with vague anger about what they personally believe is constitutional. And it also requires organizations on both sides to stop cynically prolonging the uncertainty for their own fundraising purposes, and back these suits/defenses. And like the abortion/choice policy dichotomy, it will also require legislatures that reflect the range of ideologies across the country to pass varying degrees of restrictions — including some that go “too far” — so that the boundaries can be determined and known.

ags4ever

actually, going by what the Heller decision actually stated, it said that ownership of firearms of the kind in common use at the time was protected under the 2nd amendment. Since black powder muzzleloaders, single shot cartridge weapons, lever-actions, multible-barrel firearms, revolvers, semi-automatic and fully-automatic rifles, as well as grenade launchers and all other weapons of the military are “in common use” at the present time, ownership and carrying of such weapons is specifically protected by the 2nd amendment. And that includes any accessories that might be useful with such weapons, from sound suppressors, to standard capacity magazines, to belted ammunition.

There is no need to bring suit against any level of government, for the line has been drawn, and was drawn in 1791, when the 2nd amendment was ratified, clearly prohibiting any and all local, federal and state laws that limit the power of government to deny the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

ags4ever

peterpi, let’s take your arguments in a logical order. First, the “a well regulated militia” clause has nothing to do with the ability or power of government to regulate or control the ownership of firearms. It has only to do with having a body of citizens independent from government who are at least as well armed, and as well trained in the use of those arms as are the military and police of the day, so that the citizenry can perform their designed function of maintaining an equality of force with the central government, in order to keep that government from becoming tyrannical or despotic. The words well regulated in that SUBORDINATE clause mean the same as they do in the term “a well regulated clock” in referring to a timepiece that keeps accurate time. They do not give any government any power to limit the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

There are unrestricted rights in the Bill of Rights, despite your ignorant comments. First amendment states: “Congress shall pass no law regarding the establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof, nor abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press….” That means that congress cannot do anything about religion, nor can it limit freedom of speech or of the press. And in the second amendment, it clearly states “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” which is an even more absolute prohibition of any laws limiting the right of the people to own and carry arms. That we have allowed congress and the states to regulate all those items is unconstitutional.

Scalia was wrong in stating that the 2nd amendment is not an absolute unrestricted right. The majority opinion in both Heller and McDonald, as well as in Miller case, said that ownership of the arms that are in common use at the time was protected by the language of the 2nd amendment. Since fully-automatic weapons, semi-automatic weapons. lever-actions, revolvers, and single shot weapons are all “in common use” nowadays, ownership of any of those weapons is protected by the 2nd amendment.

as to your last paragraph. Neither gay marriage (an impossibility) or the murder of innocent children by their heartless mothers is a constitutional right guaranteed by the constitution. In fact, the Roe V. Wade decision explicitly said that if science determines when “personhood” (or being a human being) occurs during pregnancy, then the 14th amendment’s protection of that person’s rights automatically apply at that point. Science and logic both know that a human being is a human being from the instant that the fertilized human embryo is implanted in the uterine lining of the mother, for there is no other time for a person to become a person.

You have no right or power to say who “needs” anything. If you say you do, then others can say you have no need to marry a person of the same gender, or to murder an unborn baby. Nor do you have the need to spout lies on this forum.

tomfromthenews

I agree with you, Ms. Lindsey. But I’m afraid all that the NRA dupes out there read is, “Blah blah blah GUN CONTROL blah blah BACKGROUND CHECKS blah LIMITING blah blah…” Any attempt to keep these kinds of mass destruction weapons out of any individual’s hands is heresy and no amount of carnage can convince them otherwise.

fedupwithgungrabbers

So a pump action shotgun use to kill 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard is not a “mass destruction weapon” to you people but a scary looking “assault style rifle” used to kill one person at LAX is? Hmm…that should make people think about what the real agenda of the gun controllers is here.

RTDennis

The purpose of a shotgun is hunting or shooting skeet. And most shotguns can hold no more than 6 or 7 shells. Even though people can be killed with shotguns, they are not designed as “mass destruction weapons” nor intended for that purpose.

Assault rifles, on the other hand, were designed specifically to kill people, lots of them. They were not designed for hunting or target shooting, even though they can be used for those purposes. They were designed to be used as “mass destruction weapons” in battle. If there were no wars, these weapons would not exist as there would be no need for them. If the only market were the relatively few numbers of people who would want these assault style rifles in their personal arsenals, it would not be economically feasible for gun manufacturers to make them. They need a war and a military force for customers.

Papa Smurf

First of all, RT, our esteemed Vice-President, Uncle Joe Biden, seems to disagree with your assessment about the utility of the shot gun as an appropriate weapon for home defense, and Aaron Alexis demonstrated vividly the shotgun’s capability to produce multiple casualties… since he assaulted so many people with it, wouldn’t it properly be classified as an “assault weapon?”

As to your assertion that “(t)he purpose of a shotgun is hunting or shooting skeet,” why does virtually every police patrol car in the country carry the ubiquitous 12-guage pump as standard issue equipment?

Assault rifles are not sold to the general public. What you see in gun stores, and in circulation among civilian owners, are pale imitations of military weapons… this from an earlier post:

After 25 years active duty in the Marine Corps, I believe I’ve had more than my fair share of training and experience with real, honest-to-goodness “assault weapons.” There is one capability that must be present in order for any firearm to qualify… it MUST have the ability to fire in a fully automatic mode, which is to say that the weapon will continue firing at it’s cyclic rate of fire when the trigger is depressed until the trigger is released, or until the ammunition supply is exhausted. NONE of the modern day rampage shootings have been committed with such a weapon. These so-called “assault-style weapons” are nothing more than semi-automatic rifles, no different in function from the dozens, if not hundreds, of more conventional looking rifles with polished walnut stocks and intricate filigree etchings on the metal receivers and barrels. They just look scarier.

ags4ever

Shotguns can hold as many shells as one can stuff into them. They have many purposes, including hunting, skeet/trap and sporting clays shooting, and home defense. just like all other firearms, they are multipurpose.

You spout your ignorance when you claim that “assault rifles are designed specifically to kill people, lots of them”. in the first place, the firearm used by the LAX shooter was not an assault rifle. It was a firearm that is cosmetically similar to the rifles used by the US military, but it is in no way an assault weapon, despite your lies. These weapons are not, repeat NOT, WMDs or weapons of mass destruction, despite your lies. WMDs use chemical agents, biological agents or radioactive materials to cause widespread destruction of both personnel and things. Since rifles, shotguns, etc., don’t use any of those weapons you are a liar.

If the US military and police have these weapons in their inventory, dennis, then according to the second amendment and the 14th amendment, the citizens of the USA have the right to have them also, so they can be familiar with their uses and limitations.

Papa Smurf

ags4ever—just a friendly appeal to your better angels… while I admire your passion, how about we cool it with the “liar” accusations? We can give them the benefit of the doubt and just assume that they’re misinformed. They have their points of view; we have ours. Most of the rants from BOTH sides are presented as indisputable facts, but in actuality, they’re really nothing more than statements about how we think things should be, or how we wish they were. Can we try to disagree without going out of our way to be disagreeable?

ags4ever

When a person deliberately makes an untrue statement, they are liars, would you not agree, PS?

What supporters of the 2nd amendment state are facts. Those who oppose the 2nd amendment, and call semi-automatic rifles “assault weapons” or “Weapons of Mass destructions” are not misinformed, for they deliberately use those lies to spread disinformation. Why be “agreeable” with someone who is out to destroy your civil rights?

Papa Smurf

Go back and read my posts, both here, and on other threads on the subject. Surprise… I’m firmly on your side. But, Man, you make it hard. As I said, I admire your passion, but most of your rants contain a smattering of “facts”, as you see them, followed by nothing more substantial than highly biased opinions. You tend to take an ultra-literalist stance on the wording of the 2nd Amendment, and what you *think* it means, with no regard for the interpretations of the court on the scope and meaning of the Amendment. Fine, you’re entitled to your opinions… but until you take a more realistic approach and come back to the world of reality, folks here (including me) are just going to skip over your posts and shine you on. They’re just not worthy of consideration. For your posts to gain any respect, they’re going to have to be grounded in reality. I suggest you start by really reading Scalia’s majority opinion in Heller. He’s very clear that 2nd Amendment rights are not absolute, and that they are subject to reasonable regulation, without violating the Constitution. You may disagree, but the cold, hard fact is this… his opinions count. Yours? Not so much.

lakeside227

Did Scalia write the Constitution? Did Scalia or ANY supreme court justice GIVE us our Rights? Did government give us our Rights?

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.” Federalist 45

“…the proposed government cannot be deemed a national one; since its jurisdiction extends to certain enumerated objects only, and leaves to the several States a residuary and inviolable sovereignity over all other objects….” Federalist 39

“…the general [federal] government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects…” Federalist 14

Hamilton Federalist 16:
“…because judges may be “embarked in a conspiracy with the legislature”, the People, who are “the natural guardians of the Constitution”, must be “enlightened enough to distinguish between a legal exercise and an illegal usurpation of authority.”

Jefferson Kentucky Resolutions 1798:
“Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes,–delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force:

that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an
integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party:
that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.”

Let me repeat – “whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force:”

“that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers;”

Not only does the Constitution NOT delegate to the federal government the authority to regulate guns, it specifically FORBIDS it from being done.

So, the federal government’s powers are FEW and DEFINED; it is NOT delegated the power to regulate guns or ANY of our Rights; the federal government is NOT the ONLY or FINAL judge of its powers; any action based on power NOT delegated is VOID.

So, exactly WHERE is SCOTUS getting the authority to define our Rights? ANY of our Rights? And WHY are you supporting them in their unconstitutional behavior?

P.S. You are correct – SCOTUS issues OPINIONS – they have NO force of law.

ags4ever

good points, lakeside. And every one 100% truthful.

lakeside227

Thanks. 😉

Patrick Henry – that speech is my favorite. Is life so dear, or peace so sweet? For me, life would not have meaning, nor could I ever have peace, without freedom.

ags4ever

Me either, lakeside. Every word of Henry’s famous speech, given on the floor of the House of Burgesses in 1775 is as true today as they were then. The war on gun ownership–and to re-enslave the American citizens–is still ongoing.

ags4ever

The only stance to take on the second amendment is that it literally means what it says and says what it means. The first part of the amendment (the “a well regulated militia” clause) is a declaratory introductory clause, which is subordinate to the main clause of the sentence (the “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” clause). It states only a single reason why the right of the people to own and carry arms shall not be infringed. As such, despite the learned Justice Scalia’s opinion, it does not give any authority whatever to any government to restrict or deny the right to keep and bear arms to anyone, and it never has.

Your comments are not worthy of consideration, because you know nothing of either the legislative history of the 2nd amendments, nor the stated reasoning of those who voted to word it as they did, or the words of those who voted to ratify the amendment.

My comments are grounded in reality. They are grounded in the fact that the writers of the second amendment clearly intended that (1) every citizen of this country be armed with weapons that were at least the equal of those used by the standing army of the time, and (2) that no local, state or federal government had any power whatever to limit the ownership or carrying of such weapons at anytime whatever.

George Washington stated : “A free people should always be armed.”

Thomas Jefferson stated in several places variations of the following “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms”, and “The constitutions of most of our states assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves, in all cases to which they think themselves competent, (as in electing their functionaries executive and legislative, and deciding by a jury of themselves, both fact and
law, in all judiciary cases in which any fact is involved) or they may act by representatives, freely and equally chosen; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person; freedom of religion; freedom of property; and freedom of the press.” (from a letter to John Cartwright, 5 July, 1824)

Richard Henry Lee stated: “to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them.”

Patrick Henry stated that “The great objective is that every man be armed; and everyone who is able may have a gun.”

Our rights are not given to us by the supreme court. They cannot be taken from us by any action of government. But if we give them up voluntarily, accepting slavery instead of freedom, then we are not worthy descendants of the revolutionaries who gave us the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

Your problem, papasmurf, is that you accept some degree of slavery. I am a free man, and like Patrick Henry I proclaim: “I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Justice scalia’s opinions are his own, and do not comply with what the constitution actually says. for the 2nd amendment clearly states that the right of the people to be armed with weapons of their own choice cannot be touched by government.

ags4ever

The fact that you prefer to attack those with whom you disagree as “NRA dupes” shows you know you don’t have any facts of any kind whatever, or any conceivable form of logic or reasoning to support your anti-gun views.

Single-shot, semi-automatic, and even fully-automatic rifles, shotguns and handguns are not weapons of mass destruction, as you and Ms. Lindsey erroneously and falsely claim. WMDS are weapons employing chemicals, biological and radioactive agents that are capable of causing widespread death and destruction. Since firearms don’t use radioactive materials, biological or chemical agents for their actions, they cannot be WMDS.

No amount of truth, though, will convince people who are totally terrified of weapons in general that they are wrong, and have no business in depriving others of their means of self defense against criminals, or a government that might deprive them of their rights.

777piloto

Jean C. Lindsey writes in Fridays Post Opinion column: “Who in their right mind
can justify one person having “at least five full 30-round magazines” along with
an “assault-style rifle.” Then she goes on to say how much we all need more
background checks and limits on magazine capacity.
Jean, you really should have done a little research before you wrote
your letter. However, since you did not, let me enlighten you. California has
some of the toughest gun control laws in the nation. Magazine capacity is
limited to 10 rounds in CA and every magazine Paul Ciancia had was illegal in
that state. Also you must pass a background check and there is a 10 day waiting
period.

I think it is safe to say that Mr. Ciancia could have just as easily
committed his despicable crime with a shotgun, so I would like to know just
which of the laws that Ms. Lindsey proposes would have prevented this
shooting?

ChrisInDenver

The founding fathers did not believe in restricting citizens from owning muskets, the same weapons used in battles. What makes you think they would act differently today by restricting AR-15’s?

fedupwithgungrabbers

The AR-15 is today’s musket.

Fowler

Only way cooler and more fun to shoot.

ags4ever

Single-shot, muzzle-loading rifles and muskets are fun to shoot. Plus they are easier to get (and somewhat less expensive) than cartridge based firearms. One doesn’t have to get government permission to exercise a constitutional right with a blackpowder firearm, while they do with a more modern rifle or handgun. That makes a right into a privilege to be granted by government.

ChrisInDenver

I certainly don’t “need” an AR-15. That really has nothing to do with it. Do we really want to talk about basing laws on what we think people “need”? If so, lets ban cars that go over 75mph. And Ding Dongs. 😉

RTDennis

Cars and Ding Dongs are not designed to kill, even though they can. Virtually anything can kill. Kids can choke on small toys and people can suffocate in plastic bags, and both have some restrictions. Most civilized countries in the world have some gun controls, but most places in the U.S. do not. Only in America can it be OK to have restrictions on toys but not on guns.

Guns are designed to kill (some to kill only people) as are grenades, bombs, etc. I’m pretty sure there are restrictions on the distribution of grenades and bombs.

Papa Smurf

Your assertion that there are no restrictions to the lawful possession of firearms in this country is absolutely ludicrous. There are age limits for ownership of weapons. Whole categories of weapons, most notably full-automatic weapons (“machine guns” and yes, your grenades and bombs, too), are prohibited without various classes of licenses from the federal government–those licenses being very difficult to come by, and which require a necessarily rigorous vetting process and a demonstrated need. There is a whole laundry list of disqualifying factors designed to prevent the wrong people from obtaining and possessing firearms. These include felony convictions, mental illness, chronic or illicit substance use and abuse, restraining orders, domestic violence convictions, and so on. And there is a system of required background checks at both the federal, and state, levels to ensure that these criteria are met.

Is this a flawed system? You bet. Can it be circumvented? Of course it can. Could we do a better job of enforcing the restrictions that already exist? Absolutely. But is gun ownership unrestricted in the United States? Only in your rather vivid imagination. Face it… you, and your ilk, aren’t interested in “regulation.” We already have that. What you want is confiscation and prohibition. Just come on out and be honest about it.

ags4ever

okay, smurf. Re-read what I said. I stated that all restrictions on the ownership and carrying of firearms are flatly unconstituitonal. For all gun control laws, which have their roots deep within the hatred and fear of the democratic party of blacks and other minorities, are flatly and completely unconstitutional, if you had actually read what I stated.

Do you have a reading disability?

Papa Smurf

Hello? I wasn’t addressing you, Sir. But as long as we’re here, let me ask… what makes you such an authority on Constitutional law, anyway? What are your credentials? Your “statements” are nothing more than your *opinions*. And you know the old saying… “Opinions are just like a-holes… everybody’s got one, and most of ’em are schitty.” From what I’ve read so far, yours aren’t worth much, and I ,for one, would greatly appreciate it if you’d just give it up… you’re hurting our cause far more than you’re helping.

ags4ever

Smurf, I have read the constitution multiple times, and have read the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist papers. I have also read the words of George Washington, Patrick Henry, James Madison, John Adams, George Mason, Justice Joseph Story, and many others who were around when the 2d amendment and the rest of the constitution was being discussed and ratified. The constitution hasn’t changed. And we are given two methods of changing the constitution in that document. No other means of changing it (judicial statements, or presidential executive orders) are in accordance with what the constitution says.

My statements are what the constitution actually says. Not what some oligarch says it says.

My opinions are what they are, factual, logical and rational, and in accordance with what the constitution states.

Papa Smurf

So, no law degree? Never admitted to the Bar? (well, maybe Murphy’s Tavern, on occasion) Haven’t been appointed to the bench? Didn’t think so.

You can stomp your feet, pound your fists on the ground, hold your breath ’til your face turns blue, and shout at the top of your lungs that you’ve read the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Anti-Federalist Papers, and three Batman comics, so you know everything there is to know about constitutional law, and to hell with two-and-a-quarter centuries of precedence and American jurisprudence. The only problem is… nobody elected you to be the final arbiter of all questions concerning the right to keep and bear arms. That job’s already taken by nine black-robed justices in Washington. I know you don’t like it, but there it is. Anybody can read the words and decide what he, or she, thinks they mean, but only the judiciary is constitutionally *empowered* to interpret the constitution and issue rulings on it. Check it out for yourself. It’s right there in that part of the Constitution that you so conveniently ignore… Article III, Section 2. You can wail about it ’til your last breath, but it isn’t going to change. And your absolutist, didactic approach gives the rest of us 2nd Amendment supporters a bad name. You’re all alone out there, futilely shaking your fist at the storm. Fine. Enjoy your tilting, Don Q. But I’m done here.

ags4ever

So you refuse to try to conduct a rational discussion, instead only repeating the nonsense you have been spoon fed about the government. Read the constitution for yourself. That’s why it was written. It isn’t in a foreign language, and we don’t need any interpretation of that document.

Despite your claims, smurf, I don’t claim to be the final arbiter of all questions concerning the right to keep and bear arms. That has already been taken by the constitution itself, as Justice Felix Frankfurter (one of the most influential jurists of the 20th century) clearly stated in “Graves V. New York” [306 U.S. 466] (1939), that “the ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself, and not what we say about it.”.

Despite your claims, the constitution does not empower only the supreme court to decide on the constitutionality of any action or law created by the government. Instead, it empowers each branch of government (legislative, judicial, and executive) to act as a check and balance to the other two, and gives the people of the United States, through the Amendment process outlined and required in Article V of the Constituiton, the ultimate power to decide what is constitutional and what is not. The constituiton clearly states that the only way to change what the constitution says is through amending it by one of the two procedures in article V of the Constitution. That includes changing meanings of individual words,as the court has erroneously set itself up to do.

I will continue stating the truth-that the supreme court has no more power to declare any law or act unconstitutional than does the legislative branch or the executive branch, or in the last resort, the people of the USA.

ags4ever

Because people are killed in cars, they are designed to kill people, by your logic, dennis.

The USA has a constitutional protection for the right to own and carry firearms, which are necessary for the people to remain free from their own government. But that right does not depend on the constitution for its existence, since it existed long before either the constitution or the 2nd amendment were ratified.

Firearms are not designed to kill. They are designed to allow a shooter to send a projectile to a target of his choice safely. ONLY the shooter holding the firearm determines whether the purpose of his shot is to kill, or just to put a hole in an inanimate object. To claim otherwise is to give weapons a purpose of their own, which they don’t have and never have had. That is anthropomorphism.

Any restrictions on the possession of any of the arms of the soldier are unconstitutional.

ags4ever

Who is this Jean C. Lindsey to say that no one “needs needs this much firepower”? Who is this Lindsey character to claim, falsely, that weapons with the standard capacity magazines that come with the firearm are “weapons of mass destruction”? That is a blatant lie, for weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) are very carefully defined in the law. WMDS are chemical, biological or radioactive weapons capable of causing widespread death and destruction. Rifles, shotguns and hand guns, and even fully-automatic weapons, fit none of those descriptions.

Ms/Mr. Lindsey knows nothing of the history of the Revolutionary War, or the second amendment, for the writers of the 2nd amendment knew that improvements to weaponry were inevitable. That is why they insisted that the word “arms” be used in the 2nd amendment to ensure that the people would always be as well armed, or better armed, than the military or police of the time. As Tench Coxe stated in the Pennsylvania Gazette on Feb. 20, 1788: “…The congress has no power to disarm the militia. Their swords and every terrible implement of the soldier are the birthright of every American….”

The weapons Lindsey says have “high-capacity magazines” have no such things. The 20 and 30 round magazines are the STANDARD CAPACITY magazines that come with the weapons.

What Mr./Ms. Lindsey refuses to recognize is that it isn’t the weapon that is dangerous, but the person holding it, who is determined and inclined to murder other people with the weapon. And passing laws like the idiotic gun free zone laws that prohibit only those persons who are neither inclined nor determine to violate the laws against robbery, rape, murder and assault from having their own weapons for their own defense only encourage people who are inclined to kill others to do so in those zones, because they know that they will not be opposed by any armed personnel for several minutes to several hours. That’s the way they like it, having victims who are disarmed by idiotic laws.

Kevis

Obviously Jean Lindsey wasn’t paying attention when the ’92 riots were going on and 58+ people lost their lives to vicious assaults, arson, rape etc.

The only areas safe for the 4 days that LAPD went AWOL waiting on the National Guard were the ones protected by residents with their “assault rifles” prominently displayed for the passing mobs – much like Jewish Passover, the mobs decided to bypass those streets.

Certainly then, we needed that much firepower. It happens every no & then, but it only takes not having enough ammunition on hand once to make the difference between the end of your life and the rest of your life.
Aside from that, look at the basis of why the right was put in the Constitution, it was to ensure the populace could resist tyranny from its own government – something the socialists in charge atm are very fearful of.

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